The image quality of image data generated by devices such as digital still cameras (DSC), digital video cameras (DVC), and scanners can be adjusted at will by using an image retouch application on a personal computer. Image retouch applications generally are equipped with an image adjustment function that automatically adjusts the image quality of image data, and if this image adjustment function is used, it is possible to easily improve the image quality of image data output from an output device. Devices such as CRTs, LCDs, printers, projectors, and television receivers are known as image file output device.
The printer driver that controls the operation of a printer, which is one output device, is also equipped with a function that automatically adjusts the image quality of image data, and it is also possible to easily improve the image quality of printed image data by using this kind of printer driver.
However, with the automatic image adjustment functions provided by the image retouch application and printer driver, image quality corrections are executed with image data having typical image quality characteristics as a standard. In comparison to this, it is possible to generate image data which is the target of image processing under a variety of conditions, so there are cases when it is not possible to improve image quality even when the automatic image adjustment function is uniformly executed and the image quality parameter values of the image data are changed using a stipulated value.
Also, among the image data generating devices such as DSCs, there are devices with which the image quality of the image data can be adjusted freely at the time the image data is generated, and the user can intentionally generate image data that has a specific image quality. In comparison to this kind of image data, when the automatic image quality adjustment function is executed, there was the problem that the adjustment would be automatically done based on image quality that uses as a standard even the intentional image quality that the image data has, so that there are cases when it was not possible to execute automatic image adjustment that reflected that intentions of the user. Note that this type of problem is not limited to DSCs, but is a common problem to other image data generating devices such as DVCs as well.